Lost Souls (1)

Chapter 15 - The Parting of the Ways

The Dalek looked at Maddie. “You know the Doctor. You understand him. You will predict his actions.”

“I don't know!” Maddie shouted.

“Predict! Predict! Predict!” Dalek called.

“Tardis detected in flight.” Another Dalek told them.

“Launch missiles. Exterminate.” Dalek ordered them.

Maddie had her eyes widen. “You can't! The Tardis hasn't got any defences. You're going to kill him.”

“You have predicted correctly.” Dalek told her.

Then the Tardis materialised around Maddie and the nearest Dalek.
“Maddie, get down!” The Doctor called. “Get down, Mads!”

“Exterminate!” The Dalek fired and misses. Jack took out the Dalek with the modified Defabricator. Rose stood there watching them.

“You did it.” Maddie breathed out. The Doctor hugged her. “Feels like I haven't seem you in years.”

The Doctor grinned at her. “I told you I'd come and get you.”

“Never doubted it. But I was afraid.” Maddie told him.

“I did and I felt you.” The Doctor looked at her. “You all right?”

Maddie nodded. “Yeah. You?”

“Not bad, been better.” The Doctor replied.

“Hey, don't I get a hug?” Jack complained.

Maddie looked at him. “Oh, come here!”

“I was talking to him.” Jack hugged Maddie anyway. “Welcome home.”

“Oh, I thought I'd never see you again.” Maddie comment.

Jack smiled. “Oh, you were lucky. That was just a one shot wonder. Drained the gun of all its power supply. Now it's just a piece of junk.”

Rose at the Doctor. “You said they were extinct. How comes they're still alive?”

“One minute they're the greatest threat in the Universe, the next minute they vanished out of time and space.” Jack replied instead.

The Doctor glanced at Maddie. “They went off to fight a bigger war. The Time War...”

“I thought that was just a legend.” Jack interrupted him.

The Doctor looked at them. “I was there. The war between the Daleks and the Time Lords, with the whole of creation at stake. My people were destroyed, but they took the Daleks with them. I almost thought it was worth it. Now it turns out they died for nothing.”

Maddie looked at him. “There's thousands of them now. We could hardly stop one. What're we going to do?”

“No good stood round here chin wagging. Human race, you'd gossip all day. The Daleks have got the answers. Let's go and meet the neighbours.” The Doctor walked to the doors.

“You can't go out there!” Maddie called after him.

---------------

They walked out of the Tardis as the Daleks shouted. “Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!” The Dalek rays were stopped by a force field extending a good three metres out from the Tardis.

“Is that it? Useless!” The Doctor was sarcastic. “Nul points. It's all right, come on out. That force field can hold back anything.”

“Almost anything.” Jack whispered to him.

“Yes, but I wasn't going to tell them that. Thanks.” The Doctor comment to him.

Jack shrugged. “Sorry.”

The Doctor looked at the Daleks. “Do you know what they call me in the ancient legends of the Dalek Homeworld? The Oncoming Storm. You might've removed all your emotions but I reckon right down deep in your DNA, there's one little spark left, and that's fear. Doesn't it just burn when you face me? So tell me. How did you survive the Time War?”

“They survived through me.” Emperor replied. The lights came up to reveal a large apparatus, which on closer inspection was an exploded giant Dalek casing, and a blue-skinned one-eyed mutant was happy for everyone to see it sitting there as if on its throne...

“Maddie, Rose, Captain, this is the Emperor of the Daleks.” The Doctor told them.

“You destroyed us, Doctor.” Emperor told them. “The Dalek race died in your inferno, but my ship survived, falling through time, crippled but alive.”

“I get it.” The Doctor comment bored.

“Do not interrupt.”

“Do not interrupt.”

“Do not interrupt.”

“I think you're forgetting something. I'm the Doctor, and if there's one thing I can do, it's talk. I've got five billion languages, and you haven't got one way of stopping me.” The fury of the Doctor played through. “So if anybody's going to shut up, it's you!” then he calmed down. “Okey doke. So, where were we?”

“We waited here in the dark space, damaged but rebuilding.” Emperor replied. “Centuries passed, and we quietly infiltrated the systems of Earth, harvesting the waste of humanity. The prisoners, the refugees, the dispossessed. They all came to us. The bodies were filtered, pulped, sifted. The seed of the human race is perverted. Only one cell in a billion was fit to be nurtured.”

“So you created an army of Daleks out of the dead.” The Doctor concluded.

“That makes them half human.” Maddie told him.

“Those words are blasphemy.” Emperor told them.

“Do not blaspheme.”

“Do not blaspheme.”

“Do not blaspheme.”

“Everything human has been purged. I cultivated pure and blessed Dalek.” Emperor told them.

“Since when did the Daleks have a concept of blasphemy?” The Doctor asked to the Emperor.

“I reached into the dirt and made new life. I am the God of all Daleks!” Emperor replied as it shouted at the end.

“Worship him. Worship him. Worship him.”

The Doctor glanced at the others. “They're insane. Hiding in silence for hundreds of years, that's enough to drive anyone mad. But it's worse than that. Driven mad by your own flesh. The stink of humanity. You hate your own existence. And that makes them more deadly than ever. We're going.”

“You may not leave my presence.” Emperor ordered.

“Stay where you are.” A Dalek shouted.

“Exterminate!” All Daleks shouted as The Doctor, Maddie, Rose and Jack went back inside the Tardis. The Daleks started shooting at the force field again. “Exterminate! Exterminate!”

------------------

The Tardis materialised on the floor 500. They all rushed out of the Tardis. “Turn everything up. All transmitters full power, wide open. Now! Do it!”

“What does this do?” Pavale asked confused.

“Stops the Daleks from transmatting on board.” The Doctor replied. “How did you get on? Did you contact Earth?”

Pavale looked at him. “Well, we tried to warn them, but all they did was suspend our license because we stopped the programmes.”

“And the planet's just sitting there, defenceless.” The Doctor frowned. “Lynda, what're you still doing on board? I told you to evacuate everyone.”

“She wouldn't go.” Pavale replied.
“Didn't want to leave you.” Lynda added.

“There weren't enough shuttles anyway, or I wouldn't be here. We've got about a hundred people stranded on Floor Zero.” A woman told them.

Just then the fleet was moving. Pavale blinked. “Oh, my God. The Fleet is moving. They're on their way.”

Then the Doctor was pulling bits out of the conduits. “Dalek plan. Big mistake, because what have they left me with? Anyone? Anyone? Oh, come on, it's obvious. A great big transmitter. This station. If I can change the signal, fold it back, sequence it, anyone?”

“You've got to be kidding.” Jack exclaimed.

“Give the man a medal.” The Doctor comment happily.

“A Delta Wave?” Jack asked.

The Doctor nodded. “A Delta Wave!”

“Ah.” Maddie comment. “Explain please?”

“What's a Delta Wave?” Rose asked.

“A wave of Van Cassadyne energy. It fries your brain. Stand in the way of a Delta Wave and your head gets barbecued.” Jack replied.

“And this place can transmit a massive wave. Wipe out the Daleks!” The Doctor added.

Lynda looked at them. “Well, get started and do it then.”

“Trouble is, wave this size, building this big, brain as clever as mine, should take about, oh, three days? How long till the Fleet arrive?” The Doctor asked.

“Twenty two minutes.” Pavale replied.

“Oh.” Maddie comment sadly.

-----------------

Later, after some rerouting of bits and pieces. “We've now got a force field so they can't blast us out of the sky, but that doesn't stop the Daleks from physically invading.” Jack told them.

“Do they know about the Delta Wave?” Pavale asked.

Jack looked at him. “They'll have worked it out at the same time. So, they want to stop the Doctor. That means they've got to get to this level, five hundred. Now, I can concentrate the extrapolator around the top six levels, five hundred to four nine five. So they'll penetrate the station below that at level four nine four and fight their way up.”

Pavale frowned. “Who are they fighting?”

“Us.” Jack replied.

“And what are we fighting with?” Pavale asked.

“The guards had guns with bastic bullets. That's enough to blow a Dalek wide open.” Jack replied to him.

“There's six of us.” A woman told them.

The Doctor looked at the girls. “Maddie, Rose, you two can help me. I need all these wires stripping bare.” The girls walked over to the Doctor.

“Right, now there's four of us.” Woman comment to them.

“Then let's move it. Into the lift. Isolate the lift controls.” Jack ordered. Pavale and his colleague ran off.

Lynda looked at the Doctor. “I just want to say, er, thanks, I suppose, and I'll do my best.”

“Me too.” The Doctor comment. They shook hands and Lynda moved away.

“It's been fun, but I guess this is goodbye.” Jack told them.

Rose looked at him, frowning. “Don't talk like that. The Doctor's going to do it. You just watch him.”

“Rose, you are worth fighting for.” Jack kissed her. “Wish I'd never met you, Doctor. I was much better off as a coward.” Jack kissed the Doctor. Then he looked at Maddie. “You are worth fighting for too.” He kissed her as well. “See you in hell.” Then he leaves.

“He's going to be all right, isn't he?” Rose asked worried.

“We can only hope.” Maddie replied.

-------------------

“Suppose.” Rose comment.

The Doctor looked at her. “What?”

“Nothing.” Rose waved it off.

“You said something.” Maddie comment.

“You said suppose.” The Doctor added.

Rose shook with his head. “No, I was just thinking. I mean, obviously you can't, but, you've got a time machine. Why can't you just go back to last week and warn them?”

“As soon as the Tardis lands in that second, I become part of events, stuck in the timeline.” The Doctor replied.

“I wouldn’t want that.” Maddie comment.

Rose nodded. “Yeah, thought it'd be something like that...”

“There's another thing the Tardis could do. It could take us away. We could leave. Let history take its course. We go to Marbella in 1989.” The Doctor suggested.

“You would never do that.” Maddie told him.

“Yeah, but you'd never do that.” Rose added.

The Doctor looked at them. “No, but you two could ask. Never even occurred to you, did it?”

“Well, I'm just too good.” Rose comment.

“No.” Maddie added.

“The Delta Wave's started building.” The Doctor told them. “How long does it need?” Then they ran over to the Tardis and went inside. They ran over to a console.

“Is that bad? Okay, it's bad. How bad is it?” Rose asked.

“Bad.” Maddie replied.

“Rose Tyler, you're a genius!” The Doctor looked at the girls. “Mads, we can do it. If I use the Tardis to cross my own timeline. Yes!” Then the Doctor told them. “Hold that down and keep position.” He told to Rose. Then he looked at Maddie. “Maddie, pull that lever.”

Rose frowned. “What's it do?”

“Cancels the buffers.” The Doctor replied. “If I'm very clever and I'm more than clever, I'm brilliant, I might just save the world. Or rip it apart...”

“I'd go for the first one.” Rose comment.

“Yeah, me too.” Maddie added.

“Me too. Now, I've just got to go and power up the Game Station. Hold on!” The Doctor ran out and stopped in the midst of his mares-nest of cables. He looked back at the Tardis then pointed the sonic screwdriver at it. The engines started.

“Doctor, what the hell?” Maddie exclaimed.

“Doctor, what're you doing? Can I take my hand off? It's moving.” Rose ran to the door. “Doctor, let us out!”

“Let us out! Doctor, what've you done?” Maddie shouted.

The Tardis dematerialised as then a  hologram appeared. “This is Emergency Programme One. Maddie, Rose, now listen, this is important. If this message is activated, then it can only mean one thing. We must be in danger. And I mean fatal. I'm dead or about to die any second with no chance of escape.”

“No!” The girls shouted.

“And that's okay. Hope it's a good death. But I promised to look after you two, and that's what I'm doing. The Tardis is taking you two home.” The Holo-Doctor told them.

“I won't let you.” Rose comment.

“And I bet you're fussing and moaning now. Typical. But hold on and just listen a bit more. The Tardis can never return for me. Emergency Programme One means I'm facing an enemy that should never get their hands on this machine. So this is what you should do. Let the Tardis die. Just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it. No one'll even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner. And over the years, the world'll move on and the box will be buried.” The Doctor told them. “And if you want to remember me, then you can do one thing. That's all, one thing. Have a good life. Do that for me, Maddie, Rose. Have a fantastic life.” The hologram flickered out.

“You can't do this to me. You can't. Take me back! Take me back! No!” Rose tried to use the controls, but the engine stopped. She ran outside into the Powell Estate, then back inside. “Come on, fly. How do you fly? Come on, help me!”

“She can’t. Its the program.” Maddie replied.

“Oh shut op.” Rose hissed at her.

“No, I will not!” Maddie sounded angry. “I can look for another way.”

“What?!” Rose exclaimed.

“I’m half Time Lord, well Lady.” Maddie replied. “I can think of something.”

---------------------

Rose finally gave up and wen outside. Maddie glanced at the doors. “Bye, bye.” The she tried everything to get the Tardis to work, but it wouldn’t do anything. “Oh old girl, please hear me and get to the Doctor.”

Moments later, Rose came back inside with Mickey. “Maddie?!” He exclaimed.

“Yeah, its me.” Maddie replied.

Then Rose looked at them. “All the Tardis needs to do is make a return trip. Just reverse.”

“Yeah, but we still can't do it.” Mickey mumbled.

Maddie shook with her head. “The Doctor always said the Tardis was telepathic. This thing is alive. It can listen.”

“It's not listening now, is it?” Mickey asked them.

Rose sighed. “We need to get inside it. Last time I saw you, with the Slitheen, this middle bit opened, and there was this light, and the Doctor said it was the heart of the Tardis. If we can open it, I can make contact. I can tell it what to do.”

“Expect, I’m gonna do it.” Maddie told her.

“What?!” Rose exclaimed. “Why?”

“I love him, Rose.” Maddie replied. “It’s gonna be me. You can come with, but you can’t look into the hart of the Tardis.”

“But, I came with the idea.” Rose protested.

“Yeah, you did.” Maddie nodded. “But you are human, so please. Listen to me.”

“No!” Rose shouted.

Maddie looked at her. “I know you love him too, but you are human. It would kill you.”

“Rose.” Mickey told to Rose. “She’s right.”

Rose huffed. “That's a risk I've got to take, because there's nothing left for me here.”

“Nothing?” Mickey asked.

“No.” Rose replied.

Mickey nodded, he was sad. “Okay, if that's what you think, let's get this thing open.”

----------------------

Mickey had fastened a heavy chain to the tow hitch on his Mini. The other end was fastened to the Tardis console. He drove forward slowly, trying to pull it open. “Faster!” Rose shouted from the Tardis.

“Oh, bloody hell.” Maddie groaned. “I hate to hurt her.”

“You wanted this too.” Rose countered.

“Yes, still do.” Maddie confirmed.

“Come on!” Mickey shouted.

“It's not moving!” Rose shouted. Then the chain broke. She kicked the console in frustration.

Just then Jackie walked up to them. “It was never going to work, sweetheart. And the Doctor knew that. He just wanted you to be safe.”

“I can't give up.” Rose protested.

“I won’t either.” Maddie added. “He needs us.”

Jack looked at them. “Lock the door. Walk away.”

“Dad wouldn't give up.” Rose told her.

“Well, he's not here, is he? And even if he was, he'd say the same.”

“No, he wouldn't. He'd tell me to try anything. If I could save the Doctor's life, try anything.”

“Well, we're never going to know.”

“Well, I know because I met him. I met Dad.”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“The Doctor took me back in time, and I met Dad.”

“Don't say that.”

“Remember when Dad died? There was someone with him. A girl, a blonde girl. She held his hand. You saw her from a distance, Mum. You saw her! Think about it. That was me. You saw me.”

“Stop it.”

“That's how good the Doctor is.”

“Stop it! Just stop it!” Jackie ran out.

-------------------

“There's got to be something else we can do.” Mickey told them.

Rose sighed. “Mum was right. Maybe we should just lock the door and walk away.”

“No, we need to get back.” Maddie told them.

Mickey looked at them. “I'm not having that. I'm not having you just, just give up now. No way. We just need something stronger than my car. Something bigger. Something like that.”

Just then a big yellow recovery truck came round the corner and stopped by the Tardis. Jackie was driving. “Right, you've only got this until six o'clock, so get on with it.”

Rose frowned. “Mum, where the hell did you get that from?”

“Rodrigo. He owes me a favour. Never mind why, but you were right about your dad, sweetheart. He was full of mad ideas, and it's exactly what he would've done. Now, get on with it before I change my mind.” Jackie throws the keys to Mickey.

------------------

Jackie watched as Rose, Maddie and Mickey used a chain to try and pulled the Tardis console open. “Keep going!” The girls shouted.

“Put your foot down!” Jackie called.

“Faster!” Rose called.

“Come on!” Maddie called.

“Give it some more, Mickey!”

“Keep going!”

“Come on, come on!”

“Keep going!”

“Give it some more!”

The console burst open. Maddie knocked Rose out in the Tardis as then she looked inside and golden energy streamed into her eyes. “Rose! Maddie!” Mickey called. The Tardis doors slammed shut on him, and the Tardis dematerialised The Tardis hurtled through time, all the time sending energy into Maddie.

-----------------

Not much later the Tardis materialised behind him. The Tardis doors opened. Maddie was silhouetted in a blinding golden light. Energy tendrils snake outwards. The Doctor looked in shock. “What've you done?”

“I looked into the Tardis, and the Tardis looked into me.” Maddie replied.

“You looked into the Time Vortex. Maddie, no one's meant to see that.” The Doctor told her.

“This is the Abomination!” Emperor shouted.

“Exterminate!” A Dalek shouted.

Maddie stopped the beam with her hand. “I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words, I scatter them in time and space. A message to lead myself here.”

The Doctor looked at her. “Maddie, you've got to stop this. You've got to stop this now. You've got the entire vortex running through your head. You're going to burn.”

“I want you safe.” Maddie glanced at him. “My Doctor. Protected from the false god.”

“You cannot hurt me. I am immortal.” Emperor cried out.

“You are tiny. I can see the whole of time and space. Every single atom of your existence, and I divide them.” Maddie told them. A Dalek disintegrated gently. “Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies. The Time War ends.” The Daleks crumbled.

“I will not die. I cannot die!” Emperor shouted. The spaceship disappeared in a golden wave.

The Doctor looked at her. “Maddie, you've done it. Now stop. Just let go.”

“How can I let go of this? I bring life.” Maddie told him. Jack breathed again.

“But this is wrong!” The Doctor exclaimed. “You can't control life and death.”

Maddie looked at him. “But I can. The sun and the moon, the day and night. But why do they hurt?”

“The power's going to kill you and it's my fault.” The Doctor replied.

“I can see everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be.” Maddie told him.

The Doctor blinked. “That's what I see. All the time. And doesn't it drive you mad?”

“My head.” Maddie groaned in pain.

“Come here.” The Doctor told her softly.

Maddie looked at him as The Doctor walked towards her. “It's killing me.”

“I think you need a Doctor.” The Doctor kisses Maddie. The golden energy transferred from her eyes to his, then she fainted in his arms. The Doctor exhaled the energy back into the Tardis and its doors closed.

----------------------

Maddie woke up as then she saw that Rose was awake too and looking angry. Then she looked at the Doctor as she stood up. “What happened?”

“Don't you remember?” The Doctor asked back.

Maddie looked at him. “It's like there was this singing.”

“That's right.” The Doctor replied sarcastically. “I sang a song and the Daleks ran away.”

“I was at home.” Maddie frowned. “No, I wasn't, I was in the Tardis, and there was this light. I can't remember anything else...”

The Doctor's skin was darkening. Then he looked at his companions “Maddie Brown, Rose Tyler. I was going take you two to so many places. Barcelona. Not the city Barcelona, the planet Barcelona. You'd love it. Fantastic place. They've got dogs with no noses. Imagine how many times a day you end up telling that joke, and it's still funny.”

“Then, why can't we go?” Rose asked confused.

Maddie blinked as she knew what was about to happen. The Doctor glanced at her, nodding. “Maybe you will, and maybe I will. But not like this.”

“You're not making sense.” Rose comment.

“He does though.” Maddie added.

“I might never make sense again. I might have two heads, or no head. Imagine me with no head. And don't say that's an improvement. But it's a bit dodgy, this process. You never know what you're going to end up with...” The Doctor doubled over in pain.

“Doctor!” Maddie shouted.

“Stay away!” The Doctor called to her.

Rose frowned. “Doctor, tell me what's going on.”

“I absorbed all the energy of the Time Vortex, and no one's meant to do that. Every cell in my body's dying.” The Doctor explained.

Maddie looked sad as Rose asked. “Can't you do something?”

“Yeah, I'm doing it now.” The Doctor replied. “Time Lords have this little trick, it's sort of a way of cheating death. Except it means I'm going to change, and I'm not going to see you two again. Not like this. Not with this daft old face. And before I go...”

“Don't say that.” Rose interrupted him.

“Mads, Rose, before I go, I just want to tell you two, you two were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And do you two know what? So was I.” Golden light burst out of the Doctor's body. This was not a nice quiet regeneration of the usual kind. Everything changed very suddenly and the tenth Doctor was standing there. “Hello. Okay. Ooo, new teeth. That's weird. So, where was I?” He grinned at them. “Oh, that's right. Barcelona.”

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Author's note: This book is done, up to the next one!